Hello everyone. It’s been a couple of months since we announced the incoming closure of the Katbox as a web host. We’ve been very busy on our end, mostly with life and work but also with trying to help our friends find new homes for their works. As promised, the remaining Katbox funds are being employed to helping these new spaces start up and the results are promising.

Hello everyone. I’m sorry it’s been so long since the last update, and there’s been a reason for that.

In many ways the katbox has been doing very well. Despite community activity dropping off drastically in the forums, the discord has been taking off spectacularly. We also experienced a record showing at Anthrocon this year, meeting scores of you wonderful people that have helped make this place a positive experience over the years.

Yet in the shadow of that great weekend the cumulative issues that have been going on with the site & community have come to a head, and I’m personally burned out beyond the point I think I can recover. I came to realize this shortly after arriving home from Pittsburgh. After talking with some people close to me I came to possibly one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make. One I should have maybe made at the start of the year, when the burnout began to set in. I’m doing it now, though.

Over the coming months, possibly up till near the end of the year, the Katbox is going to be winding down operations and moving artists off site. I feel that I’ve made every reasonable effort to avoid doing this. Late last week it looked as if we were going to be able to take on a new administrator so I could just retire, but that fell through Thursday evening when they looked over everything and decided they couldn’t fix the site’s issues either.

We’re going to do everything we can to ensure that all the Katbox artists will have a home to go to before this is all over. We’ll be using whatever remaining funds the site has to try to cover expenses and make this as painless as possible. Already about half of the artists have found new places to host their content and we will be letting everyone know where those places are.

The patreon will be kept up a little longer, your continued support will help us defer the costs of hosting and to pay expenses for people who need new hosts. Once it’s all done, though, the katbox front page will be all that remains, linking to the artists who helped make it what it was. I still want to support them as much as I’m able. For the foreseeable future the discord server will also remain, though it will become a more general purpose art and culture community.

To the people who have sent inquiries to me I need to apologize for not responding. As I became more burned out I have been a lot less diligent in checking email and responding to messages.

The Katbox is not going to be for sale. This site has been my home on the internet for 15 years. It’s my precious. I may want to bring it back someday for something, but for now a new chapter begins. I look forward to what happens next and wish everybody the best. I’m sorry to the community that I was not able to fix the site’s issues and make it the best place it could be. If you want to support the artists of the Katbox, their patreons could use your patronage more than ever.